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Heard on Campus

Heard on Campus

"Our future rests on our nation's citizens to be informed and to be active participants in our democracy. And people can't be active participants if they're not informed and they're not engaged. And I think we all have a responsibility to do that. I think we all have a responsibility to ensure that our next generation is educated and is brought together, and understands the role of citizenship as well as their place in this country."

"Find a problem you see in the world — something you’re passionate about, something that really matters to you — and work on that. When you hear most founders talk about their companies, you realize it’s all about fixing problems and finding solutions ... ."

"I founded the Points of Light Civic Accelerator and I get to work with hundreds of civic entrepreneurs around the country. I'm working with these entrepreneurs who are using technology and they're coming up with new thinking and ways to mobilize people, to connect people to change the world...."

-- Ayesha Khanna, president of the Points of Light Civic Incubator, spoke on Wednesday (April 15) at IST Startup Week, a week-long celebration showcasing talented innovators and entrepreneurs from around the country, including alumni from the College of Information Sciences and Technology and Penn State. Tune in to a live streaming of events at http://startupweek.weebly.com/live-streams.html.

"Our first core value is to have a positive attitude. Again, really simplistic. Really simplistic. That's something that we can control. We talk about controlling the controllable -- waking up every single morning with a positive attitude and being really appreciative of the opportunity we have at Penn State. We talk about waking up in the morning and doing a back handspring out of bed, ready to attack the day with everything you have."

Susan Russell, associate professor of theatre and the 2014-15 Penn State Laureate, spoke on "Making Change Make Sense," at the Penn State Forum Speaker Series, held Feb. 11 at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel on the University Park campus.

"I always leave this with the people I give my testimony to. You know, when we go through things in this life, we don’t have to depend on drugs, we don’t have to depend on the alcohol, but we got to really believe in God."

“Today instead of elites we have celebrities. They dominate the landscape like giant monuments to aspiration, fulfillment and overreach. They’re as intimate as they are grand and they offer themselves for worship to ordinary people searching for a suitable object of devotion. In times of widespread opportunity, the distance between these gods and the mortals closes. The monuments shrink closer to human size; the lives of America’s celebrities become gossipy diversions; they loom large in times like now when inequality is soaring. Trust in institutions is falling and the normal paths of upward mobility seem blocked. Celebrities no longer rise with their fellow American; they rise from them. They constitute their own super class."

Penn State President Eric Barron spoke about student engagement, student access and affordability, and economic development and student career success during his first student town forum on Monday, Nov. 10, in the Hintz Family Alumni Center.